"For women, AIDS stigma worse"

This story reminds me of an old joke about a NY Times headline: "World to End Tomorrow: Women, Minorities to be Hardest Hit."

I say this because the author argues that the HIV/AIDS epidemic is worse for women while admitting women make up half of the victims of HIV/AIDS. Why is it worse for women? Because women are infected by men, which means men must change their behavior. (The notion that men are likely infected by women apparently does not occur to him.)

His question:

"Is it inevitable fate or the will of God that women everywhere should suffer the greatest stigmatization and discrimination because of HIV and AIDS?"

His answer:
"Biologically, culturally, economically and religiously, women are more susceptible to HIV. In today's world, AIDS has a woman's face. Women total almost 50 percent of the 33.2 million HIV-positive persons worldwide. Of the infected, women comprise 61 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, 40 percent in Asia, and 21 percent in the U.S."

His solution:
"A major reversal of male attitudes and actions is imperative." He provides a number of examples of needed changes, including men's complicity in supporting gender inequality, unsafe sexual practices, and "rejecting patriarchal structures and relationships."

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From the article:

"Martin Luther King Jr. years ago declared that 'injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.' If we are co-conspirators contributing to gender inequity and injustice, the freedom of all people is imperiled and the health and well-being of all is threatened."

How ironic that the author should say that and yet it is HE who is "contributing to gender inequity and injustice" throughout this article with his misandry.

For example, "Fifth, we men must partner with women in rejecting patriarchal structures and relationships."

No, we men must partner with women in OBJECTIVELY eliminating HIV/AIDS around the world.

______________________________________

Vince
http://againstmisandry.blogspot.com

"Stand up for what is right, especially if you stand alone."

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To even suggest that women are treated as inferior, receive less attention or victims of patriarchal oppression in sub saharan africa is nothing short of intellectually stupid. Thanks to the absurd feminist inspired programs in Africa, (RED) and that ilk, women in africa receive more aid, attention, programs etc than men. The argument should be made, is this disparity and sexist treatment of the issue why so many of these programs are so slow to be minimally effective or fail completely. Africa is a prime example of how quasi-feminist ideology fails rather than helps, because the underpinnings of the ideology fail to see how the world for what it is versus the way they want to see it. Feminist policies in Africa are responsible for killing more women than men, then helping.

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And who infected the men, that infected the women?

Anyone?

Anyone?

...

Guy's a pussy. Fit him for a diaphragm.

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Actually I hate to disappoint you guys, but a registered nurse once told me that it is HIGHLY improbable for a man to get AIDS/HIV from a woman through sex. It is conveyed by bodily fluids but vaginal fluid and saliva, and sweat, do not generally have high enough concentrations of the virus to transmit it to someone else.

As personal evidence of this, I have a female cousin who has had HIV for about 15 years, all the while engaging in mutual oral sex with her lesbian partners with no transmission of disease occuring. (my cousin got it from an old boyfriend before she bacame gay. The boyfriend later died of AIDS).

-ax

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"Actually I hate to disappoint you guys, but a registered nurse once told me that it is HIGHLY improbable for a man to get AIDS/HIV from a woman through sex."

If we assume your nurse friend is correct, then that's a physical mechanism that has nothing to do with the patriarchy--which receives a lot of blame in the article. In fact, rejecting the "patriarchy" is touted as the solution.

The question raised by your comment is this: how did these men become infected if not by sex with women? Only two other choices come to mind: sex with men or sex with animals. If we assume the first, then rampant homosexuality is the real problem here. Men get it from other men and then infect women. The solution is not to reject the evil patriarchy, as the author argues, but to reject homosexuality.

And if it's from sex with animals, well, I guess if a man's not getting it at home, he has to get it somewhere... (Okay, I'm being facetious.)

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men getting it from needles

and not being careful what they sit on?

i've always heard that straight hetero males who

don't play w/ needles really don't have much to worry about

when it comes to this terrible disease.

so it follows that if women limit sex to straight non-junkies,

there would be no problem for them either.

and wearing a condom with a new partner just ups the odds even higher.

"his solution" sounds like typical minion opinion. utterly useless.
blaming men for who women sleep with.

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Unfortunately, you're missing a crucial detail. It's highly improbable for a man to get HIV from a woman through sex AND also improbable for a woman to get HIV from a man through sex (Note in both cases, sex is defined as "Vaginal sexual intercourse," with no condom)

In the a European study on heterosexual transmission of HIV, it was shown that man to female transmission rate was 10/10,000. This meaning that out of ten thousand such "exposures" to infection, females were only infected 10 times. Female to man, the transmission rate was 5/10,000. Yes, while that is less often than the man to female transmission rate, not by much. Both are less than 1%, and I'd therefore call them BOTH improbable.

(Source: European Study Group on Heterosexual Transmission of HIV. "Comparison of female to male and male to female transmission of HIV in 563 stable couples")

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Men get the disease mainly from other men. It is not necessary for there to be rampant homosexuality for the disease to spread. I agree that's not part of any "patriarchy".

-ax

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I didn't say anything about the overall likelihood of someone getting AIDS. What I am saying is that it is much easier for a woman to get it from a man than vice versa. Obviously we are talking about cases where one person is already infected.
-ax

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Yes, both men and women can get HIV from sharing needles.
-ax

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manonthestreet

I don't see why this should be happening in Africa. Are there a lot of injecting drug users in Africa? I think not.Are Africans bisexual? Again I think not. This issue is probably more shrouded in myth and misunderstanding that most.

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el cid says "men get the disease mainly from other men".

axolot says "both men and women get HIV from sharing needles".

trotter thinks there's not a lot of intravenous drug use in Africa.

from the stat's provided above it appears men men and women are
pretty much unlikely to get it from "normal" hetero sex.

i've "heard" that a lot of men travel the "dirt road" w/ women,
well, whenever possible. that's how men give it to men, right?

something don't add up.

oh yeah, someone mentioned the sex w/ animal thing. monkeys and such
i imagine.
you ever tried to catch a wild monkey? you better be real horny, and fast.
had one for a pet when i was a kid. i think my mom wanted to shoot the dam thing.
scorched all the hair off his ass in the winter getting up close to the heater.
not a pretty sight.

yep, this is a real puzzler. oh well, gotta go feed the sheep dogs. later.

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I'm learning something from the responses.

I had not considered needles as another possibility. Duh!

If I understand correctly, the likelihood of a man getting infected by a woman is about half the likelihood of a woman getting infected by a man. In short, men can get HIV/AIDS from women, but it's twice as likely the other way around. Still, even a 10-out-of-10,000 chance of getting infected is not very high.

That raises questions about why women make up 60% of HIV victims in sub-Sahara Africa. If, as ax argues, HIV is spread primarily by male-male sex acts, then a lot of married men are having sex with other men. If it's caused by infected needles, a lot of married men are doing drugs.

Or a lot of women are using infected needles.

The article assumes husbands get it from sleeping with other women and then infect their wives, who cannot say no to sex or require the man use a condom. Of course, if a wife is infected by another man, she can infect her husband simply by agreeing to have sex with her husband--no force is needed.

'Tis a puzzlement.

What bugged me about the article was its thesis that the AIDS crisis could be resolved if we men would all be good feminists and reshape society--indeed the world--along feminist lines. We could then end the unfair suffering of female AIDS victims. Yeah, right.

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"you ever tried to catch a wild monkey? you better be real horny, and fast.
had one for a pet when i was a kid. i think my mom wanted to shoot the dam thing.
scorched all the hair off his ass in the winter getting up close to the heater.
not a pretty sight."

Your story about a pet monkey reminds me of my pet monkey story.

When I was a kid, we had a pet monkey. We also lived in Boulder, Colorado where it gets cold in the winter. To solve this problem, my dad built a cage with access to the crawl space under the house. The monkey could go into the crawl space to get warm, as that's where the heating ducts were located. The monkey would sometimes get into the heating ducts.

We had a friend come over for supper one evening, unaware that we had a monkey as a pet. He decided to use the facilities and was seated doing his business when he looked at the floor vent just in front of him. The monkey was sticking his hairy little paw up through that floor vent.

You can imagine what happened next. He was out of the bathroom in about two seconds, pulling up pants, yelling "What the hell is that?"

To do this day, I still laugh thinking about the expression on his face.

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I'm talking about cases where one person is already infected. Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse (not that the horse died from AIDS either).
-ax

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I don't believe horses can get HIV, unless their white blood cells have the same molecular structure as ours do.

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I realize I am a couple days late for this topic. I do have something to add though.

I was informed during plenty of sexual education, biology, and reproduction classes that even in heterosexual intercourse that there are tiny tears in the skin from stress and friction. These tears are both to the male, and to the female sexual organs. These tears allow access into the body through the protective layer of skin, and that is how the infection is transferred.

I find it highly unlikely that there is a rampant, yet hidden, homesexual sexcapade in Africa. I also highly doubt that there is a rampant (in terms of the number of infected) needle sharing epidemic.

My personal opionions of course. While it is "unlikely" to be infected either way (male-female; female-male) you have to figure that 10,000 instances of sex (with an infected person, though many do not know they are infected until physical symptoms appear) would not take very long to accumulate.

How many times do you have sex with a signifigant other in a week? (Please dont answer, just food for thought)

That good looking woman you just picked up tonight, you only going to have sex with her once while she is there? (Although I assume we dont really have to worry about most transmissions as I hope the men here use protection)

If you figure that you have sex twice a week during the course of a year you have had sex 104 times that year. Thats not too bad. However physical symptoms to HIV may not even manifest for a decade or more.

So 104 times a year x 10 years... that means you would have been infected at least once.

So over the course of your lifetime in an AIDS country like Africa you have been infected at least 4-5 times.

Now your symptoms don't manifest immediately so you continue along your route of sexual gratification...

I hope this made sense and wasnt a ramble or incoherent.

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